PHIL SIMMS A MAN FOR ONE SEASON

CBS Sports number one NFL analyst dissects Instant Replay, defends parody and puts the big money fishbowl of pro football into persepective…

For 15 grueling seasons Phil Simms played quarterback for the New York Giants. In that time he was sacked more than any other signal caller and heard the jeers of fans who expected him to be the next Y.A. Tittle. Even after leading the franchise to its first play-off birth in 18 seasons, he felt the sting of reports that someone somowhere could do a better job.

That all changed in 1986 when his Giants won a Super Bowl highlighted by his MVP performance. Simms completed a record 22-25 on a day he has admitted time and again was destined to be his. Four years later Simms had the Giants at 10-1 before suffering a season-ending foot injury and missing the team’s second triumph in the big game.

But when he retired in 1994 Simms’ left behind a resume that put him in the pantheon of Giants greats that has his name bandied about in Hall Of Fame discussions. During his tenure behind center those who swore he’d be missed once he was gone were proven right. Since his last game the Giants have had a host of starting QB’s with little to no success.

When Simms headed for the broadcast booth a few years later he became NBC’s fastest rising analyst. Calling Super Bowls and even Olympic events he combines an honest, no-nonsense style that speaks to fans aboove the din of professional sports hyperbole. When the network lost its football package, rival CBS scooped up the talented Simms and made him its lead anylist.

Mostly, Simms is anything but shy when discussing the game he’s loved for most of his life, a game he cites as a daily lesson learned everyday he slipped on a helmet. He doesn’t appologize for defending the National Football League, but he sees its faults and potential greatness better than most.

As the league enters the 21st century the man many have called a “thowback” sees both sides clearly. From Instant Replay to Free Agency, Salary Caps and a wide open run for the Super Bowl each year, Phil Simms still views the game as both beauty and grit, talent and effort, and most of all, a 60 minute drama filled with subplots and heroes played out over frigid Sundays of grandeur.

It was a tough year for the NFL, with the Ray Lewis trial, the Ray Caruth incident down in Carolina and the death of Derrick Thomas. Most of the off-season news has been negative for the league.

I’m not going to let a couple of incidences destroy everything the league is all about. Yes, there has been some very bad publicity. It has been extremely unfortunate, but does that change the way that I personally look at the NFL? No, it does not. I still view it as a great league, great entertainment and I always say this — it is made up of a lot of outstanding people. That’s from owners on down to the players. Most of the players.

I have high regard for the way many of the players go about their business on and off the field, the way they play and the way they live their lives. There’s always going to be trouble. Now, these are extraordinary cases this past off-season. What happened to Derrick Thomas is an incredible tragedy. But there is always going to be some trouble when you’re playing in the spotlight of the NFL. You’re a high profile athlete with so many people involved peripherally. There’s going to be trouble always. You and I both know that in that spotlight, it’s always going to be a big deal. Everyone is looking.

Certainly, three bad stories are always more interesting than hundreds of good ones.

C’mon, people really don’t care about those. They want to read about bad stuff. They want to hear about accidents and crime on television. That’s what sells. And I’m not saying that has anything to do with what happened this past off-season. I’m not apologizing for Ray Carruth. Derrick Thomas? He did a lot of good things in Kansas City. Was he a saint? By no means, he was not. He’s like a lot of young people. He liked to have fun. He made mistakes in his life. He also took time out to share his good fortune with a lot of kids. Athletes need to be commended for a lot of the good things too. He should be remembered for that.

I think we do forget that these are young men maturing in the limelight.

That is a wonderful point. You’ve got young men who play in a sport with tremendous high visibility and all of a sudden you have fame and money that most men their ages, or any age for that matter, will ever have. And that allows you to do so much more, but also puts you in different atmospheres and environments when you’re doing it. And you’ve got to be careful.

That’s the one thing that upsets me about players in the league. You’ve just got to know that people are watching all the time. You’ve got a different set of standards to live by. That’s the way it is. Deal with it. You better know that when you mess up it’s going to be big news.

Big news last year was the return of Instant Replay. Are you a proponent of it, and, if so, do you think it was used correctly this time around?

Wasn’t a big deal either way. That play at the end of the Tennesee-Buffalo play-off game. What did that replay tell you? If someone says to me it was definitely a forward pass I’d have to say get a life! How many times can you look at it? It was inconclusive.

That drives everyone nuts.

But it was inconclusive! Is replay perfect? No. Is it useful? Absolutely. It stops the really big-time errors like the Vinnie Testerverde non-touchdown in 1998. It eliminates a lot of the controversy a high percentage of the time. I don’t think people, writers, announcers and many fans know the rules with replay. It leads to further confusion. It has to be conclusive to overturn a play. It has to be clear cut, otherwise there is no point. All replay can do is take the pressure off the officials and put it on the coaches. That’s the way the NFL wants it. One thing is for sure, it’s here to stay.

Parity is the big word around the league now.

That’s because nobody can come up with something else, so they just throw this “parity” around. (sing-song) Parity! Parity! “Who’s gonna win the Super Bowl this year?” I honestly don’t know. “Parity!”

You have to admit though that in the past two seasons you had four completely different teams in the championship games. Two seasons ago the Atlanta Falcons went worst to first. Then last season it was first to worst. Who could’ve predicted the St. Louis Rams winning the Super Bowl after going 3-13 the year before?

Listen, parity is happening in every sport. It’s in college sports too. Take the college basketball now. Even though you have Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky and all those programs that can have a tremendous advantage, who can go out an basically hand-pick who they want, still does not guarantee them winning the tournament.

There are just more talented players available to more teams. A program can only recruit a certain number of players. There are much more out there for other programs. And how that correlates to the National Football League is that there are so many more talented football players available than anytime before.

But the league has set it up where with the way the draft is conducted from worst record selecting first to best picking last, and the fifth place schedule being easier than the first place schedules. This was the late Pete Rozell’s dream, to have it truly be “on any given Sunday.”

It’s true. The gap between the top athlete to the bottom athlete in all sports has changed dramatically. That’s the main difference in the league today to when I played. The mid-level player is better. The level of play between the superstar and the role player is no longer as glaring. Of course, the system helps. Worst team drafting first and free agency keeps the talent pool spread out.

Would you say that free agency has been the biggest change in the league in the last few decades?

I always say — and I never hear anyone agreeing with me either — the biggest change in the league is coaching! Coaching has gotten so much better. It’s hard for coaches to go out on a Sunday and out-coach the other team. Winning because you’re a better coach is not as much a factor now.

When I was playing back in the mid-eighties to the late-eighties we had three or four games a year that I knew we couldn’t lose because the coach on the other sideline wasn’t going to let us lose. He was going to mess it up eventually. You can’t say that as much anymore. The coaching today is more aggressive and highly inventive, and it’s nearly impossible for a team to gain an edge with the X’s and O’s like we did in the past.

Speaking about a coach who gained an edge on your sideline when you played, Bill Parcells has called it quits after a very successful career. You guys have remained friends over the years. You did the New York Jets pre-game shows the past two years. But you two are inseparable not only as legendary coach and quarterback. You had your acrimony and mutual respect, an almost father/son battle.

I was giving a talk in front of a group recently and somebody raised their hand and asked if I was a general manager, what kind of coach would I look for, and told him I want a guy like Bill Parcells every time. Does he have to put off the persona Bill does? Does he have to be media savvy? Not at all. I want a guy who can stand up there and inspire people. And I don’t mean some speech before the game, “Let’s go win!” Nobody cares by then. Can he inspire people to make them work harder –physically and mentally– than they want to without alienating them? You have to somehow find a way to relate to the players on about 20 different levels, because that’s what you have in that locker room.

You can hire coaches to do X’s and O’s for you, but to create a working atmosphere that will allow people to excel, that’s the trick. There are a lot of coaches out there who can make it look good on the blackboard, but can you make those people do all the little extra things during the off-season and during the week that make them excel on Sunday. That’s what a great boss does. That was Bill Parcells when he coached.

Did you ever consider coaching?

People asked me that all the time, and that was my goal in life. I wanted to play and then try the coaching thing. It does fulfill a lot of things I love like teaching. But it’s too late for me. I’ve been out of the game too long. The game is progressing so fast. I’ve forgotten a lot of the little finer things.

No kidding?

To run the ball off tackle takes tremendous work. Just designing one play to block 40 different fronts and all these defensive looks. I don’t have the time. I’m 45 years-old. By the time I put in my five years of work I’d be in my mid-fifites before I could take on the job of head coach. I’m not that patient and I don’t think I’m tough enough anymore. I couldn’t go in there at six every morning and work until ten, eleven every night of the week. I’ve gotten spoiled doing what I do. I’m just trying to hang onto this job.

You’re one of the top analysts in the game now. How hard was it making the transition from the guy who has to deflect the media, to the objective journalist getting the story and reporting on it live?

Anytime you change jobs it’s tough. The one thing I had going for me is I really love the sport. I love talking about football at any level. It intrigues me. It was getting down the mechanics of the business that took time. Taking the expressions in the locker room that may take awhile to translate and getting it across in under a minute on television. Then, it’s… “can you do the same thing in 20 seconds because a minute is way too long.”

It’s a lot like playing. I say this all the time — if you really like what you’re doing it will work. If you’re doing it for some other reason, forget it. If I was broadcasting NFL games strictly for the money, I think it would show in the work. It’s like a professional athlete getting to that level because they love the work. The money comes as a result of that. Sometimes the money gets in the way, but the first thing is the love of it. And the first time I’m not loving it anymore you’ll say, “You know, he’s not as good as he used to be.”

John Madden has his thing. Now you have Phil Simm’s All-Iron Team. What would be the number one credential to making the squad?

The player’s just gotta be eaten up with it. He’s gotta be obsessed with trying to do his best. Does he have to be the best player? No necessarily. You’ve just got to live and die the game. It has to be part of you. Mostly it’s the second tier guy that gets in. Hey, even though I’m an ex-quarterback I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. They have a chance to be stars. I’m looking for guys who are really out there working and no one is paying attention to them when they should be.

Last year we gave a truck to fullback, Sam Gash because he’s out there making the play develop while nobody is noticing him at all. Anytime the skill people are out there having great games it’s because someone else is busting it and allowing them to excel on the football field.